Woman in a cropped black top and leather trousers, showing a leopard print tattoo on her upper arm, a wing tattoo on her forearm and a figure tattoo on her side.

Leopard print and wing tattoos on arm and torso

Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A cropped view from the chest down shows a woman in a black top with a red pentagram print, black leather trousers and fingerless gloves. Tattoos on her upper arm show a leopard pattern in black and grey, and a black wing sits on her forearm. A figure tattoo on her side is in grey tones, with a small patch of red ink near her wrist.

Upper arm Forearm Other Leopard print Wing Figure Flame Pentagram

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Okonedo had run the screen-printing room above the launderette for thirty-one years, and in all that time she had never let a stencil dry overnight. Her rule was that ink remembered where it had been left. So when Tomasz came in on a Monday with a rolled-up pentagram he had drawn on the back of a gas bill, she made him wait while she scrubbed the squeegee twice.

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The goat's head sat in the middle of the star, horns curling out past the points, eyes cut so fine they seemed to squint at the press. Tomasz wanted it red, the colour of a fire engine seen through rain. Mrs Okonedo mixed the ink herself, adding a drop of black until it sat like old blood on cotton, then pulled the first print on a black vest that someone had torn at the hem with their teeth for effect.

It went wrong in the small hours. Nobody was in the room, but the racks of finished shirts were found stacked by the window in the morning, each red star turned to face the door, the goat's eyes gone a darker shade than the ink had been. Mrs Okonedo blamed the humidity and the cheap dryer. Tomasz blamed the cat, which had been dead since spring.

She sold the last shirt to a customer who came in asking for something with an edge. Mrs Okonedo wrapped it in brown paper and said, "Wash it cold, and don't let it sit wet," the way she always did. The customer laughed and said she would rather leave it in the sun. Mrs Okonedo watched her go and then, for the first time in thirty-one years, went round the back and sprayed the stencil with water, just to see it run.